Casting a spam flag shouldn't auto-downvote a question

Question

The best thing to do with pure spam questions ('CHEAP NIKES' etc) it to get rid of them as fast as possible.

This can be done by the community casting 6 spam flags against the post. However, each spam flag also casts a downvote against it. People can also downvote posts they have flagged, or just downvote the spam post without flagging it as spam. After 4 downvotes the question will disappear off the frontpage but still remain open / undeleted. This means a spam post can theoretically accrue more downvotes than spam flags, and thus disappear off the front page of the site they're posted to.

This is bad.

We need spam to be removed altogether, not just hidden from the frontpage. If a post is hidden then it's less likely to acquire spam flags and will theoretically stick around longer than it should to.

I see no overall benefit to the site for spam posts to accrue downvotes. It's a hindrance more than a help really. People are free to downvote what they want, so we can't stop people downvoting spam. But we can stop spam flags from auto-downvoting.

So that's my suggestion. Remove the auto-downvote feature from spam flags. Unless someone can give me a good reason as to why downvoted spam is better than deleted spam.

Answer 1

Once it's been identified as spam, we want it off the front page. Nothing is more off-putting to a potential contributor than arriving to a site and finding the streets littered with discount Gucci bags. Once it's tagged - it's quickly purged.

Moderators see spam flagged posts in a different sort group than anything else, it's like a secondary bat signal. On most of our sites, pure spam gets flagged off the front page in seconds, and deleted within minutes (with a few exceptions).

Users can (and often do) go right to the "Questions" tab, then sort by newest while looking for something to do. It'll show up there, where it's quickly handled.

For the most part, we handle this sort of thing in a very elegant way. We make no bones about it - we get lots of spam (though, most of it is blocked these days) - but most people won't ever see it. That's hard, and we just sort of do it naturally, I'd hate to break that :)

Answer 2

The front page is where the muggle users will see the post. The auto downvote gets it away from them as quickly as possible. Many of the users with flagging abilities will see the post in their moderator pages or /tools.

You can't have it both ways. Either that off-the-front-page spam is still seen by enough people that it gets flagged, or it isn't seen by enough people to flag it, thus sticking around longer/forever - but it isn't seen by anyone so it doesn't bother them. I think the first case is what happens, especially since there are lists of flagged posts available to many flaggers and mods that serve exactly that purpose. The current system hides it from those who cannot flag and at the same time highlights it for those who can.

Answer 3

I disagree with this. The current system works fine IMHO. Let me explain you how. As @Kate said the front page (e.g. http://meta.stackexchange.com) is mostly used by new users who either don't have ability to flag or don't know to flag or don't flag in initial stage.

While veteran users, who have flagging ability, know how flagging system works, flag often (specially spam and offensive), mostly use question's tab (e.g. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions) to browse questions.

As you said the downvoted questions will be disappeared from the from the front page. But actually they are disappeared from the front page only (where new users browse). We can still see them in the questions' tab (where veteran users browse).

So with the current system the chances of new user seeing spam posts is reduced while the chances of veteran users identifying spams is increased. Also they read heavily downvoted post more carefully ^{it's people's nature}.

Answer 4

The auto-downvote actually helps with combating spam on low-traffic sites.

For instance, this morning I saw spam on the Workplace. I noticed that the spam answer was posted to an old question, then I recall having seen another old question before on the same front page. So I navigated to that other question, scrolled (swiped) to the bottom of the page, and indeed: There's another spam post, ready for flagging.

(This approach relies on the (default) sorting order of answers, which is by votes. One could also sort by the "active" tab or use Ctrl + F to look for spam, but that takes too much efforts, especially on the mobile site.)

I would rather raise the required number of downvotes before a post falls of a frontpage (at least as much as needed to delete a post with spam flags). I see more spam than terrible answers, so it makes sense to optimize against spam.